CNET Live: January 17, 2008

[ Music ] ^M00:00:09 >> Tom Merritt: Coming up on CNET Live, thin is in. And we've got the Air to prove it. >> Brian Cooley: And a 3G laptop with a 150 thousand dollar case? >> Tom Merritt: And if you're a fan of Spore and a fan of Mac, you're going to be happy. It's all coming up on CNET Live. ^M00:00:25 [ Music ] ^M00:00:30 >> Brian Cooley: Welcome back, gang. And I might say welcome back, because we're back off the road for the first time in weeks. >> Tom Merritt: I had only 1 trade show to come back to. You had 2. >> Brian Cooley: I had 2. We did CES and I went on to the Detroit Auto Show. We've got some video from that coming up in today's show. But you are the star, and it's good to get back with here at the top of '08. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, and don't make us panic like this people. Everybody... >> Brian Cooley: Are the phones jammed? >> Tom Merritt: ...at one, where we're fine now. We've got calls coming in. >> Brian Cooley: Don't do that to us. >> Tom Merritt: You can call before 1, really. >> Brian Cooley: They're [inaudible] tools for that. >> Tom Merritt: You really can. It's okay. >> Brian Cooley: 888-900-CNET is the number: 888-900-2638. >> Tom Merritt: And when you call Cheryl is standing by to pick up the phone. >> Brian Cooley: There's Cheryl. >> Tom Merritt: There she is. >> Brian Cooley: Hey Cheryl. >> Tom Merritt: She's been waiting bored for like 15 minutes. >> Brian Cooley: Oh yeah. >> Tom Merritt: But now she's super busy. >> Brian Cooley: Where are the calls? >> Tom Merritt: So we better leave her alone, but anyway... >> Brian Cooley: As she processes those, we kick things off as we do every single show with "Things We Crave." ^M00:01:18 [ Music ] ^M00:01:21 >> Tom Merritt: These are some of our favorite things from the Crave blog at crave.cnet.com as we mentioned at the top of the show. >> Brian Cooley: Whatcha got? >> Tom Merritt: Electronic Arts saying they actually will release the Spore this year. It's been delayed -- or not delayed, but everybody keeps wanting it to come out. >> Brian Cooley: Anticipating. >> Tom Merritt: And they say "Well, not till next year. Not till next year." >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: So they said that they will be releasing it sometime in 2008, on the Mac at the same time as the PC. >> Brian Cooley: That's unusual right? >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, that is not usually -- that is not usually -- usually Mac games come out later... >> Brian Cooley: Or not. >> Tom Merritt: ...or not at all. >> Brian Cooley: Right. >> Tom Merritt: In this case, not only definitely coming out for the Mac but also a simultaneous release. >> Brian Cooley: And you know me - Mr. Non-Gamer - what's the story on Spore? >> Tom Merritt: Well Spore is from Will Wright, creator of SimCity and The Sims... >> Brian Cooley: Oh okay. >> Tom Merritt: ...that whole... >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, yeah. >> Tom Merritt: ...Sim Earth. This is kind of The Sims meets Sim Earth meets evolution. You start with Spores... >> Brian Cooley: You see those in the corner of the screen there. >> Tom Merritt: ...and [inaudible] simulate the whole development of whole species, and ecosystems and... >> Brian Cooley: So I can create what looks to be Phyllis Diller with 7 legs. >> Tom Merritt: Yes, well you can allow the conditions for Phyllis Diller with 7 legs... >> Brian Cooley: To spawn. >> Tom Merritt: ...to naturally occur. >> Brian Cooley: Boy I'll sit up all night doing that. >> Tom Merritt: Oh yeah. >> Brian Cooley: Okay. >> Tom Merritt: I almost fear this game because unfortunately people will sit up all night doing this. >> Brian Cooley: Oh The Sims are always that kind of an addiction. Well mine is far more - I don't know - boring. It's a hardware story, but I love this thing. >> Tom Merritt: I love the Drobo though. >> Brian Cooley: Folks love the Drobo. It's a really cool -- it's a RAID server of sorts, but it makes RAID servering easy for the average user. It's a very sophisticated storage server. And it never had network ability. You had to plug the thing into your local machine, which is stupid. They finally added this thing you see on the bottom of the photo. That's called the DroboShare Module which connects to your Drobo drive system and gives it network ability. It also gives it lots of file or disk format compatibilities, so you've got EXT3 which is the Linux thing, you've got HFS Plus for Mac OS support, you've got of course NTFS for Windows and then the older FAT32 which is Windows and kind of Mac also. >> Tom Merritt: What did you call me? >> Brian Cooley: Sorry. And the nice thing about it is the Drobo didn't have FAT32 support originally. It was one of the gripes we had about it. This apparently kind of graphs that onto the drive. To me it's a little too expensive though at 200 bucks for basically... >> Tom Merritt: For an add-on. >> Brian Cooley: Basically it's a NIC. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, because I mean the Drobo itself doesn't have any hard drives in it to begin with. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, you've got to drive it up. >> Tom Merritt: Then you've got to buy -- they're taking a page out of Apple's book here. >> Brian Cooley: Exactly. This is... >> Tom Merritt: And saying "You're gonna love this! This works really well! There's nothing else like it." >> Brian Cooley: Right. >> Tom Merritt: "It looks cool." >> Brian Cooley: And we're the cult in Drobo. >> Tom Merritt: "And we're going to continue to charge you." >> Brian Cooley: "Yes, you want to buy vertically into our little world." And that's the way it goes, but if you love a Drobo then you are probably a savvy enough user to want network ability, so you're gonna buy it. It's just that simple. But I'm going to hold off for a little while. Okay, enough of that rant. What do we got on the phones? >> Tom Merritt: Yes, let us move to the telephone. San Diego, we have Chris on the line. Thanks for calling Chris. >> Chris: Wow! I got through! This is cool! >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, we didn't have anybody on the lines for like the 15 minutes before the show, so call early. >> Brian Cooley: What are you thinking Chris? What's on your mind? >> Chris: Okay, great! My question is about Leopard. I own a MacBook Pro and the new iMac and on my MacBook Pro I did a clean upgrade and it works perfectly. I love it, but on my iMac why do I have problems on my iMac when my MacBook Pro works perfectly, is I guess my general question? >> Brian Cooley: With the Leopard upgrade disk? >> Chris: Yeah, I bought Leopard. I did upgrade on both. The MacBook Pro worked perfectly. My Leopard, my first upgrade I had problems. And I did 2 clean installs, and it's alright now. My only main issue on my iMac is that I have two, 500 gig CGate drives that are hooked in there. One's for media: one for my work. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah? >> Chris: And when I'm like working, and your working at the computer, works great. But the moment I walk away for 45 minutes or more, the drives shut off and then I have to restart my iMac again for it to be able to recognize those drives. >> Brian Cooley: So that's the problem you're having with this now upgraded iMac? >> Tom Merritt: And have you patched it yet with the new Leopard... >> Chris: Yeah, I patched it. Yeah, and I still have the issues. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah. You're not alone. I don't know exactly whether -- I don't have any explanation for this happening. But a lot of people with iMacs have been reporting problems with Leopard. In fact some people who buy new iMacs with Leopard have reported issues. >> Brian Cooley: So it's not necessarily an upgrade path thing? It's... >> Tom Merritt: I don't think so. I mean I'm looking at... >> Brian Cooley: Not necessarily. >> Tom Merritt: ...Tomsguide.com and they're talking about people who had to take back their brand new iMacs to the store because they were messing up. So I wish I had better information for you. I'm sure somebody in our audience does. If you want to go to our forums - forums.cnet.com - ask around. Find out if somebody out there has got some experience with why this is happening. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, it's time for the Genius Bar to earn its name I think. >> Tom Merritt: Well yeah, go to the forums. >> Brian Cooley: Right, where the real geniuses live. >> Tom Merritt: When you go to the Genius Bar, there's only so many things they can say. So... >> Brian Cooley: True, alright hey thanks for calling Chris and good luck with that. >> Chris: Okay, take care. >> Brian Cooley: [inaudible] with one if you get it solved so we can tell everybody else. >> Tom Merritt: Alright, let's go to another call from Alex in Pennsylvania. Alex, you are on CNET Live. >> Alex: Hi. >> Tom Merritt: Hey, how you going? >> Alex: Good. I have a question about the Eee PC. >> Tom Merritt: Eee. From ASUS. What's your question? >> Alex: I heard on the Eee user forums that they had accessories for it, like the mouse and the battery? >> Brian Cooley: Okay. >> Alex: But I've been searching around and I can't find them anywhere. Do you know if they haven't come out yet or they are just hard to find? >> Brian Cooley: Okay, so you're thinking batteries and what else are you looking for? >> Alex: There's a mice [inaudible] and carrying cases I think? >> Tom Merritt: Well, I mean you can use any USB mouse. There's a lot of accessories you can get that are just PC accessories. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, the battery's the only one that really sounds specific. >> Tom Merritt: But you're saying you want to find some accessories that are particular to the Eee PC? >> Alex: Yeah, just because they look better, like the mouse matches the color of the PC. >> Brian Cooley: Oh, alright. Well, let me do one thing here and -- have you checked on the ASUS website? Do they document them as being released already? >> Alex: I've checked around but they don't say if they're released or not. >> Brian Cooley: Oh well, yeah. Until they're saying that they've got them and have links out where to buy - cause they'll do that when they're for real - they may not be shipping yet. Let me check something right here real quick. I'm going to go to a couple of these bigger online merchants and see if they show them as either in stock or on the way. Let's see, I'm looking here at CDW and I see only machines in their 5 listings. Now CDW tends to get stuff as quick as anybody. I don't see any accessories. I just see the various families of the black and white Eees. So that's not a good sign. And another good one to check of course would be Amazon, not that they're the computer specialists, but they have as deep a relationship with manufacturers as anybody just because they move such volume. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, Shopper.com here at CNET only has the actual Eee PCs. I'm looking at Google's product search as well. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: I did find some cases that are made for the Eee PC... >> Brian Cooley: But not by ASUS. >> Tom Merritt: ...not by ASUS but they are you know, they've made to fit the Eee PC. Those are all available on EBay though, so I think those are kind of home brew sorts of situations. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: I don't know. Do you see any news? >> Brian Cooley: No, it looks as though there's nothing out yet for that machine. So I just think those are pre announced accessories and for whatever reason, ASUS hasn't gotten them on the ground yet. No, I don't see anything on Amazon either, just the actual machines and a bunch of dumb books that are trying to capitalize on the hype by saying "Here's how to use it," like you don't know how to use a Windows PC. Okay, alright coming up, more on Macworld with News.com reporter Tom Krazit: the guy behind the One More Thing blog. No one is more dialed into Apple than he is. >> Tom Merritt: And Steve Jobs, you know him, he's the head of Apple. He announced the arrival of Apple's newest laptop, the Air. Michelle Thatcher got a First Look at it. Take a look. ^M00:09:17 [ Music ] ^M00:09:20 >> Michelle Thatcher: Hi, I'm Michelle Thatcher from CNET.com here at Macworld 2008 with the just announced MacBook Air. Now check this laptop out. It's got a 13.3 inch backlit LED display, so it's nice and bright and it's very large too. A full size keyboard, and look at this, super thin. It's 8 tenths of an inch thick at its thickest. When Steve Jobs was debuting this during his keynote, he actually pulled it out of an inter office envelope, which gives you a sense of its size. Now the whole thing is less than 3 pounds and as you can imagine, to get a laptop this small they've got a number of features inside to help bring down the component sizes. For example, there's an 80 gigabyte hard drive that's actually the same hard drive they use on iPods. There is a 1.6 gigahertz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor that's actually smaller than previous Core 2 Duos. And you'll notice that there's no optical drive. To get around that problem, Steve actually debuted a new program that lets you borrow the optical drive of any computer on your network. So this whole package is available for preorder now and will be shipping in 2 weeks. The cost is going to be 1799 which frankly is a really good price for such a lightweight notebook. I'm Michelle Thatcher, at Macworld 2008 for CNET.com. ^M00:10:36 [ Music ] ^M00:10:39 >> Tom Merritt: Alright, joining us now to talk over some of those other announcements from Steve Jobs keynote address is the author of the One More Thing blog on News.com, Tom Krazit: reporter extraordinaire. Thanks for joining us. >> Tom Krazit: Glad to be here. >> Tom Merritt: You were at the keynote. >> Tom Krazit: I was in the hall. >> Tom Merritt: You were feeling the distortion field all around you? >> Tom Krazit: It was. It was. Yeah, and it hurts. >> Tom Merritt: That's because you were resisting it. You have to abandon it all and say... >> Tom Krazit: You think I would have learned that by now? >> Brian Cooley: Let go. It's okay. >> Tom Merritt: So, what do you think was the biggest of the announcements, because this year there wasn't an iPhone. There wasn't like a huge one, but there were a lot of bigger ones. >> Tom Krazit: I think the most significant one that we'll look back on in a couple of years is the movie rentals through iTunes. I mean that's just a whole new distribution channel that we're going to try to see if people are actually interested in this kind of model: you know, renting movies over the internet. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Krazit: I mean it's been tried other places, you know Apples got iTunes on a lot of computers. >> Brian Cooley: Like 3 or 4 bucks, so the price is good. It's industry standard it looks like. That's what everyone's charging now generally, for an older or newer film. The -- what's the HD picture on this? >> Tom Krazit: Well, you've got to pay an extra buck for that apparently. >> Brian Cooley: Okay. >> Tom Krazit: And the actual files themselves are not -- the specs haven't really changed on that. It's still not even full DVD quality I believe. It's something slightly below that. So... >> Tom Merritt: I think it's similar to what like Microsoft does with their Xbox Live: HD movies, same sort of deal. >> Brian Cooley: A little more compressed. >> Tom Merritt: It's compressed. >> Brian Cooley: So... >> Tom Krazit: So you know and that's a downloading you know, concession. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, cause there's HD and there's HD. This is probably not going to be at 720 P anyway is the target. So they're already shooting for the lowest tier of HD. >> Tom Merritt: Well there's the resolution and the code and the [inaudible], right? >> Brian Cooley: Then the Kodak. >> Tom Merritt: Right? Yeah. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, big difference. >> Tom Merritt: There's a difference there. >> Brian Cooley: There's 720 lines, but what's in those lines may not be as nice as what you see on you know, a Blu-ray disc player or something like that. >> Tom Krazit: Most people I don't think will even notice the difference though. I mean you know -- for the regular files themselves, so... >> Tom Merritt: David Katzmaier will notice. >> Tom Krazit: David Katzmaier notices everything. >> Brian Cooley: David Katzmaier will notice. Now Tom, all the hype went around the MapBook Air because I think hardware is what the people look for from Apple all the time. >> Tom Krazit: It is Macworld. >> Tom Merritt: It can go in an envelope. >> Tom Krazit: It wouldn't be Macworld without a new Mac I guess. I mean the MapBook Air is sexy, in a word. >> Brian Cooley: It's impressive, I mean look at that thing. >> Tom Krazit: It's a really, really -- I mean you know, it shows you something about Apple too, that they were able to get Intel to design a completely new chip and chip package just to fit into this thing, for this one product. >> Brian Cooley: So that's how they did it, they had to have a whole new carrier and processor flattened way down... >> Tom Krazit: Yeah, apparently Intel was working on something similar but you know when Steve calls, maybe you're a little bit more attentive to that than other people. So... >> Tom Merritt: Well there are other notebooks that are you know, around as thin. This one's just pretty, right? I mean is it that much different than the other stuff that we have out there other than the style? >> Tom Krazit: Not a ton. It's not -- my colleague Michael Kanellos actually did a little research and it's not the thinnest notebook ever either. There are the few that came out and that went away pretty quickly, that you've never heard of, but... >> Tom Merritt: They snap in half probably. >> Tom Krazit: But yeah, this is pretty thin. And you know at 3 pounds, so it's you know a load off for all you guys who are traveling a lot. And you know, I think it's a pretty competitive product when you put it against the rest of the ultra-portables. >> Brian Cooley: Let's go to the iPhone updates. That one I think also got a little bit buried in the news cause it's little... >> Tom Merritt: I don't know, it's just kind of a firmware upgrade. It kind of made a big deal out of it, I felt like. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, the Google's thing? >> Tom Krazit: The maps thing is nice. >> Tom Merritt: It's cool. >> Tom Krazit: I mean you're gonna like that and that's something you'll use. I mean you know if you're traveling in a city, you don't know what the address is, you don't know what corner you're on, you can just fire it up... >> Brian Cooley: [inaudible] it all the time because I have that same map on my Trio but it's dumb on the Trio. And it doesn't know where I am. I've got to first figure out where I am and type that all in tediously. >> Tom Merritt: Well I know Google's made an update to it so you might see of there's one available for the Trio too. >> Brian Cooley: Oh okay. >> Tom Merritt: Because you're right, I mean when you're driving and somebody's like "How do we get somewhere?" And you're like, "Wait, where are we first?" You know? So this takes care of that. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Krazit: And we'll have to see how accurate it really is. I mean for demonstration purposes they had it triangulated pretty well, surprisingly enough. >> Tom Merritt: I've tried this too well, when I jailbreak the iPhone, I was able to use Navazone [assumed spelling] which is the same sort of thing. And it depends on where you are. I can't get a lock inside of CNET. In other buildings I can, and in some places I can get it right down to the intersection I'm at. Other times it's like kind of like "You're in San Francisco somewhere." You know. It really -- the road test kind of says it depends on where you are. >> Tom Krazit: Yeah. >> Brian Cooley: Is Apple - in hitting a little bit of an air pocket - a lot of the negative pundits are saying "They can't rock forever. And this is the beginning of their plateau." What's your gut tell you? >> Tom Krazit: You can't do an iPhone every year. I'm not convinced you can do an iPhone every decade. I mean you know, that was a once -- not a once in a lifetime thing, but you don't do that very often. And yeah this year was not anywhere close to what you know, happened last year, but that being said it's not like they made any mistakes. It's not like... >> Tom Merritt: Well it seems like they made the Apple TV into a worthwhile product? >> Tom Krazit: More interesting product, yeah. I mean you know, you're still married to iTunes with Apple TV. It's not like you can use it as a DVR with your cable or satellite provider, which I think would be a really interesting product, but... >> Brian Cooley: It doesn't define the category. There are other credible ones out there, like the one that came out from Arcos at CES, that does more. It's more flexible, clearly going to be harder to use I'm sure. I haven't gotten my hands on it yet. But Apple's used to kind of defining their categories, and in this case, I don't think any of these do that? Maybe the Air, to a degree? >> Tom Krazit: You could argue the Air just from the designs. I mean it's a Halo product. You know, it's the kind of thing where they're showing off, "Look what we can do." And yeah, I don't think it's going to drive a ton of market share or anything like that, but it is another you know, example of what Apple can pull off. >> Tom Merritt: Well even the movie rental story isn't new, but if anybody can make it work finally, Apple might be the one. >> Tom Krazit: Well we'll see. >> Tom Merritt: They did it with music. >> Brian Cooley: That's right. >> Tom Merritt: And then lost it. >> Tom Krazit: Well they haven't lost it quite yet but it's slipping out of his hands right now. >> Brian Cooley: That's a whole other hour. Alright, thanks Tom. >> Tom Krazit: Thanks guys. >> Brian Cooley: Appreciate it. Okay so, coming up we've got our Download of the Week and more of your calls, coming up here on CNET Live. ^M00:16:19 [ Music ] ^M00:16:47 >> Catch the baddest techsploitation vids at CnetTV.com. ^M00:16:51 [ Music ] ^M00:16:54 >> Want to check the tech on the latest rides? CNET TV's Car Tech puts you in the driver's seat, with in depth reviews of the newest models. >> Brian Cooley: Some of the worst technology implementation I've ever seen. >> And special reports from auto shows around the world. Just got to CNETTV.com. ^M00:17:09 [ Music ] ^M00:17:12 >> Brian Cooley: Okay, back we are at CNET LIVE. Phones are open at 888-900-CNET. Give us a ring. >> Tom Merritt: Time now for the Download of the Week. ^M00:17:20 [ Music ] ^M00:17:24 >> Tom Merritt: Download of the Week is brought to you by our good friends at CNET's Download.com, where you get free software that is spyware free. Today we're looking at one I can't believe I haven't actually featured on Download on the Week yet. >> Brian Cooley: Oh good grief. >> Tom Merritt: Audacity. >> Brian Cooley: The best. >> Tom Merritt: The free sound editor. >> Brian Cooley: The best. >> Tom Merritt: The reason it came up into my mind is they have a new beta version. It's been out for a little bit. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: But I just started using it. I finally was like "Well, I'll try the beta." I've been using... >> Brian Cooley: 1.33. >> Tom Merritt: I've been using the Gold release. This is 1.33 and if you don't know Audacity at all, it's a multi-track sound editor. You're able to, you know kind of move around your tracks, add stereo, add mono, put in some effects, you can compress, all that sort of thing. In 1.33 one of the cool things, you can grab a track like this -- and of course you can move it back and forth like you always could... >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: ...but you can just pull it up into another track. >> Brian Cooley: In theory anyway. >> Tom Merritt: Yep, see? Look it goes right there. There you go. >> Brian Cooley: There it is, pop. Okay. Yeah, it didn't do that before and if you've done any work with multi-track audio you know that is a really important basic tool. You know, reordering things in tracks to keep them in the relationship you want them in terms of how you view the production. So that's nice. You know, this is one of those pieces of software that has made me think "Why would you write open source shareware, when you could sell this for a fortune?" This is a great piece of software. >> Tom Merritt: And it also has the ability to line up automatically. Do see this yellow line? >> Brian Cooley: It says the snap to version. >> Tom Merritt: So you can snap right and put things exactly after each other without having to guess like "Do I have it?" >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, good stuff. Love Audacity: love it, love it, love it. And shame on you for not bringing it to us before. >> Tom Merritt: Alright, so you can get that at Download.com. Let's go to the phones and on the line we have Tommy in a place I would rather be right now, Maui. Hi Tommy. >> Tommy: Hey Tom, hey Brian: how are you guys? >> Brian Cooley: Good Tom, what's up? >> Tom Merritt: Doing alright man, how's it going? >> Tommy: Hey, I've got a question. I've got a Apple TV and I've been kind of loading up with movies here and there, and my hard drive's full on my iMac G5. And I went and bought one of those Western Digital -- I'm not sure if it's the access anywhere -- kind of scary thing with that. But I haven't opened the box yet. I'm looking at this box here and then I look at the Time Capsule. And I'm thinking "Well, is Time Capsule going to be, you know, my solution for just kind of put all my media on a network drive and then I would access from any machine in the house. And I was hoping that Time Capsule would do that but it just seems more like "Okay, you gotta be on Leopard," which I can't do because I'm doing some other stuff and it's not ready for Leopard yet. >> Brian Cooley: So hang on now, you want to use this external drive and let Apple TV reach to it as an additional extended storage. Is that right? >> Tommy: That's correct. >> Brian Cooley: Does that work Tom, because you've got the original Apple TV? Will it reach out and see network drives or only see its own base? >> Tom Merritt: Apple TV just -- you can get it to sync with any other computer running iTunes. >> Brian Cooley: And you can't run iTunes on another [inaudible] device. >> Tom Merritt: That's all you can do with it natively. Now there's tons of people who've hacked the Apple TV to do all kinds of unnatural things... >> Brian Cooley: Yeah? >> Tom Merritt: ...so you know, do a couple Google searches. You might find somebody that's been able to hack it... >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: ...to do something more like that, because it is a computer. It's got a gig -- you know. But you'd have to change the operating system to make it do that. There's nothing in the operating system that's on it that will allow you to do it easily. >> Tommy: I was just thinking that I could move my iTunes library over to this drive, Point iTunes to it, and then the Apple TV would find it that way. >> Tom Merritt: What you could do is move all your iTune stuff onto that drive... >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: ...like you say, point iTunes and say like "that's one of the folders that you need to include" because that shows up as a letter on your drive. And then tell Apple TV to stream - essentially - the content from that computer. So you'd have to have the drive, the computer, and the Apple TV on, but that would put it up on your TV. >> Brian Cooley: That would work. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah. >> Brian Cooley: Okay so it's not truly adding storage to your Apple TV, but that isn't what you need to do anyway. You just want to... >> Tommy: I just want a back up thing and if the house burns down, grab one drive and run. >> Brian Cooley: And centralize all your media on 1 drive, it sounds like: one big inexpensive drive. So that should work. >> Tom Merritt: I mean you could use your Western Digital hard drive with Time Machine too. You don't need Time Capsule to do it. >> Tommy: Oh really? >> Tom Merritt: I've got a guy here on a blog who says he's got Time Machine on Leopard OS, bought a Western Digital My Book Essential, 500 gigabyte version, and got it to work. So he said it took forever to back up everything, but he got it to work. >> Brian Cooley: Okay, so there's a way to go. So try that out. Let us know how it works out. Okay, let's go onto to -- we got a call about the Helio Mysto. Is that right Tom? >> Tom Merritt: Yes, that is correct. On the line here is... >> Brian Cooley: I'm looking at the Mysto right now. >> Tom Merritt: Oh it's Sergio. Sergio, in Los Angeles: hey, Sergio. >> Sergio: Hey, what up? >> Brian Cooley: Those are great sound effects. Those are great sound effects. As you started your call, we heard the creaky door hinge, like it's a haunted house. >> Tom Merritt: Or were those birds twittering in the background? I don't know what... >> Brian Cooley: Hitchcock movie, alright. >> Tom Merritt: It's very nice though. >> Brian Cooley: Anyway, continue. We're just being silly. >> Sergio: Okay, first of all I'd like to say thanks for -- cause you guys helped me out choosing my camera and all that kind of stuff, so... >> Brian Cooley: Oh cool. Cool. >> Tom Merritt: Glad we could help. >> Sergio: Alright, you're welcome. My question is like when are you guys gonna have like a review of the Helio Mysto and what do you guys think about it? >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, I think the Mysto is in lab as we say, right now. I just looked at the Crave posting we have on it from Nicole Lee that went up yesterday. So we've got that fresh right here on the screen. You can see -- folks who haven't seen the Mysto, it looks this. It's one of these you know, heavily screen oriented devices. And it's got a little central jog wheel right there in the lower part, so it's definitely one of these phones that is media centric. It's also very GPS centric. It's got a strong built in GPS chip, enabled for applications like the Google Maps we were just you know, ogling there on the upgraded iPhone. They've got Tellme integrated here. You see a Tellme logo on the upper left, so when they integrate Tellme with a local GPS search, an application they've written to let you look up directions, simply by voice recognition or to find a dog trainer just by talking to Tellme. It's an amazing application. Anyway, I don't know when our review is coming up but I would expect within the next week or maybe a little bit less, and pricing on this is as low as 149 with a contract. We know that already. >> Tom Merritt: Alright, let's go to Joe in Canada who's on the line with a question on wiping a hard drive. Hey Joe. >> Brian Cooley: Hello Joe! >> Tom Merritt: Maybe Joe got wiped? >> Brian Cooley: Hey Joe. >> Tom Merritt: What are you doing with that hard drive in your hand? >> Joe: Hey, sorry about that. >> Tom Merritt: Oh hey, there you are. >> Brian Cooley: There it is. That's what I'm talking about. >> Tom Merritt: A little Jimmy Hendrix... >> Brian Cooley: That's the old ham and egg we do every week, and that by the way is a free service here at CNET Live. >> Tom Merritt: So Joe, what's your question? >> Joe: I was wondering -- I think it's called Drake's [inaudible]. Do you guys... >> Tom Merritt: Darik's Boot and Nuke? >> Joe: Yeah, that was it. When you do nuke your hard drive, does it wipe the operating system or just the files that are on there? >> Tom Merritt: It wipes everything. >> Brian Cooley: Everything. >> Tom Merritt: The whole -- it just overwrites and you can have it overwrite multiple times and scramble and do all kinds of crazy stuff, but yeah it is getting rid of every single thing on your drive. So you're not preserving the operating system. The idea being that you've got your OS on a disk, backed up or a recovery disk or something like that... >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: So you can put the operating system back on after you've wiped the disk. So for resale, you would do that: you'd wipe it so you'd get all your files as obscured as possible that only the CIA - even them - would have a hard time getting them back. Then you put the operating system back on from your recovery disk. >> Brian Cooley: If you want to just get rid of files, there are other programs like Eraser. I think it's a free download that let's you just target directories - entire directories - you could do it really quickly, kill all your files and your data. And just spare your operating system directory for example. That's a whole different kind of a program. >> Joe: What was that called? >> Brian Cooley: Eraser. Try that one out: it's at Download.com. It's one of many that do that but that's one of the most popular and it truly shreds files as well as being targeted. It's not a drive eraser per se, because it has to run in the operating system. So it's going to assume that you've got a machine running under it, so by definition it's not going to want to blow out the OS that it's riding on. So it's a different kind of tool. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, it's kind of like Darik's Boot and Nuke but for a particular file. And the thing is it's not going to be as comprehensive as Darik's Boot and Nuke, because the file is going to be in different places on your hard drive... >> Brian Cooley: They'll be threads. They'll be threads left. >> Tom Merritt: ...so it's not going to be able to get every little piece of it, but you know if that's what you need. >> Brian Cooley: Although it works pretty well and you can do it - you know - 7, 8, 10 passes and get rid of your data pretty thoroughly. Okay, thanks for the call on that one. Let us know if the CIA comes knocking. Now I just got back from the Detroit Auto Show - known as the North American International Auto Show - just to give you some idea how important it is. It's a major, major car show. One of my favorite rides there was a little Italian hot rod with and internet connection. Check out the Maserati Quattroporte Cento. ^M00:25:48 [ Music ] ^M00:25:56 >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, hi Dick? Yeah, sell IBM. No, no, no sell the whole damn company. Right. See you at the Four Seasons for lunch. That's the kind of captain of industry you feel like in this car: the Maserati Quattroporte Cento. Cento for 100 because they're only going to make that many of them: very limited edition. Now right away, you can see one beautiful touch: the Poltrona Frau Leather with the Diamond Back upholstery. I haven't seen this since I last drove my '69 Mark III: very nice. Now technology's what we're really here for. Check out the screens: two 10-inch touch screen LCDs in the back of the seats. And these by the way, are just running a standard Windows PC. You can see as I move around, check out the menu, bar, it's all very familiar stuff. That can connect to the internet, because this car just needs a sync card to then use 3G Data. I think it's the first car from the factory that I know of that has a 3G cellular internet connection built in right from the beginning. That's kind of cool. Now down here you've got a slot - or I should say more accurately, a tray - for optical disks and that's really quaint to me because there are much better ways to play media in this vehicle. You'd find those in here. Here's a couple of USB jacks. There's an Aux. Here's an iPod holder and well. I see an SD card slot. Oh and by the way, if you don't want to use those touch screens, the thing I just took out of the way is a folding Maserati branded Bluetooth keyboard. You can actually do full computing in this car on the run. That's pretty cool. Now there are many other luxury tech options in this car, but they aren't quite as novel as what's back here. Now I'd say go get in line for 1 of these when they arrive later this year, but since they're only going to make a hundred and they're 150 grand to start, you probably don't qualify. Now I have to go sell General Electric. Bye. ^M00:27:46 [ Music ] ^M00:27:50 >> Brian Cooley: Gotta love it, right? >> Tom Merritt: That is one nice looking car, I have to say. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. I mean the keyboard's cute. I think it's basically... >> Tom Merritt: Keyboard's nifty. >> Brian Cooley: It's one of those Bluetooth PDA keyboards, is all it is. >> Tom Merritt: Right, yeah. I mean the key -- it looks really good until you open it. >> Brian Cooley: Right. >> Tom Merritt: Like it's got the whole Maserati logo -- "Oooh that's cool. Oh it just's a..." >> Brian Cooley: Oh it's that piece of crap I had for my Trio. Right. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah. >> Brian Cooley: It's a cool back seat, I'll tell you that. >> Tom Merritt: Alright, let's try to squeeze in a call here. We've got aptly named Tom on the line: third Tom on the show today. >> Brian Cooley: It's Tom-Fest today. >> Tom Merritt: Tom from New Jersey. Hey where are you calling from in New Jersey? >> Tom: I'm calling from Central Jersey. >> Tom Merritt: What's your question today? Thanks for calling by the way. >> Tom: Hey, I was pretty much wondering -- should I get the MacBook Air now or I've heard some rumors that there's going to be yet another update to the MacBook Pro or the MacBook in October? >> Brian Cooley: I hadn't heard that. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, there's always rumors like that. And they're probably... >> Brian Cooley: And there's always an update coming so it's... >> Tom Merritt: They're probably close to true, is the thing. Like that would be about right on the timeline for a refresh. What kind of refresh? I don't know... >> Brian Cooley: It'd be about a year, right? >> Tom Merritt: But yeah, I mean if you're thinking about getting the MacBook Air anyway, that's not the same as the MacBook Pro. It's a little closer to a MacBook. I'd go ahead and get it if you really want it. If it works for you, if it does all the things you want I wouldn't wait till October unless you have no urgency and you want a computer that will have a bigger hard drive, or more USB ports, or you know. >> Brian Cooley: Or maybe the solid state hard drive option will come down in price by then because I don't think we yet know what that option's gonna cost. >> Tom Merritt: It's around 3 thousand dollars for the top of the line. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: That's like the solid state drive, and all the options. >> Brian Cooley: That's the only thing that I would think about waiting for is "Okay, I want a Air but I want the solid state hard drive." To me that completes the whole picture. Will that be cheaper if they rev it you know, later on this Fall. Otherwise you know, just go for it. What do you think of the price real quick: 1800 bucks? Does that strike you as cheap, expensive or just about right? >> Tom: For me I'm thinking it's just about right and even towards cheap because I've seen the other ultra portables and they're going for 2 grand and up. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, the low 2 thousands. I'm just taking a little straw poll. I think people are really surprised and delighted by the price. >> Tom Merritt: Really? >> Brian Cooley: Okay, yeah. >> Tom Merritt: I've found the opposite. >> Brian Cooley: Really? >> Tom Merritt: But that's just people stopping by my office. >> Brian Cooley: Okay, thanks for the call Tom. >> Tom Merritt: Hey, if you've got a favorite website folks it's time to nominate the Second Annual Webware 100. Go to Webware.com/100 right now. Nominate your favorite website to be in the top of the list. This is the second time we're doing it and it was great last year. It will be even better this year. >> Brian Cooley: Speaking of webware it's now time for Best of the Web. ^M00:30:20 [ Music ] ^M00:30:22 >> Brian Cooley: And Best of the Web is our pick for a great website or service every week brought to you by our friends at Webware.com: which really means we crimp off of their hard work all week. So if you like what I'm about to show you, they've got dozens of these happening every week: amazing websites. This one's called Overstream. Have you ever seen a video and you wanted to caption it your own way, just to be like a smart ass? >> Tom Merritt: Oh well yeah, usually annoying my wife by doing that out loud. But I get what you're saying. >> Brian Cooley: Okay, this is better. You'll do it without moving your lips. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Brian Cooley: Well, you might move your lips while you do it but, check it out. I'd made a little -- I recaptured one that Rich Brown did here when he reviewed the Blackbird Mega PC. >> Tom Merritt: I get it. >> Brian Cooley: These are my -- my little titles at the bottom. >> Tom Merritt: Right down there at the very bottom. If you can't see it folks in stream, there's some caption coming up. >> Brian Cooley: It's an Editor's Choice. Yeah, so what you do is you find any video that you like. You put its URL into this service called Overstream, and then... >> Tom Merritt: You're a mean man. >> Brian Cooley: ...you basically republish the video and it gives you a new URL that you can send around. I'm not sure what they're doing. I don't know if they're actually making a new video or just blending the 2 videos together on the fly. >> Tom Merritt: With a little delay on Flash. >> Brian Cooley: Not that you really care. So here's how the thing works. You actually go to this tool: that's the final output. Here's the tool. You see I've got the video right there on the left hand side, and I just kind of gave it the URL. This is from UTube just cause I thought I'd use the most common service. And then you're just gonna move your timeline along and then as you want to add a title - let's say I want to add one right there at the keyboard - I just go hit the Add button right here and you can see. It makes me a little shade right there. And that's where I would add my title and then it publishes it on top of that point of the video and you can make it take less or more time. I can do this say, "Hey, great keyboard." Not a lot of options in terms of formatting the font, the size or where it shows up - I'd like to see that improve - but this is a fun tool if you want to add your own voice to videos and then share them with your friends. >> Tom Merritt: And snarkiness [assumed spelling] not included. >> Brian Cooley: Snarky is key. You've got to bring your own. By the way that's Overstream.net: not dot com. Overstream.net. >> Tom Merritt: Alright folks, next week Presidential politics. >> Brian Cooley: Oh boy. >> Tom Merritt: But don't worry, we're not gonna get about our favorites. We're gonna be talking to the folks from Glassbooth.org. >> Brian Cooley: Oh okay. >> Tom Merritt: They are an incredible site to help you say, "These are the issues that are important to me. Who should I vote for?" And they make some suggestions and give you a chance to explore the candidates, choose for yourself. So can't wait to talk to them. >> Brian Cooley: Next Thursday, we'll see you right back here at 1:00 Pacific, 4 Eastern... >> Tom Merritt: 10 am Hawaiian. ^M00:32:43 [ Music ]